These damn cats...

So the development of Small Town Dad has really been a slow kind of introduction, blog style, to me and my family.

By way of recap - readers of these pages will now know:

1) I live in a small town in the middle of Michigan
2) I've been married 19 years and am the father of two great kids.
3) The guy down the street thinks I am a pain in the backside.
4) I am, perhaps, a pain in the backside.
5) I sometimes write as if I am getting paid by the word.

There is much to the story of my family still to be told.  Take for instance, these two damn cats hovering around my desk. I am not a cat person.  However, the three people with whom I share my home are unabashed cat people. So that's one more thing I got going for me.

The two cats have names, though I cannot remember them.  And as the children grew and became more fluent in the King's English, I couldn't keep calling the cats "dammit" and "HEYQUITIT!" So while I am almost certain of the fact we named them once, I cannot remember their names now.



The Brown's grandpa.  He's famous, or was.

 They are, to me, "the brown one" - a purebred Tonkinese whose grandcat was, seriously, some kind of National champion.  I am not sure what kind of National champion, so don't ask.  I don't recall a cat ever fighting Muhammad Ali or winning the US open, but he was a National champion of some sort. We have had the brown one for 11 years - and like my children when they came into our home, we became intoxicated immediately with how cute this cat was. Unlike my kids, the brown one's cuteness did not make up for her complete lack of usefulness for very long.

Then there is "the grey one."  The grey one is my fault entirely.  I thought I might like the brown one better if we got her a playmate and I could observe the two frolicking.  We thought it would be nice for her to have a "sister."  So I picked out the one and only cat at the adoption event that, as it turns out, had unbeknownst to me been living as a feral cat up until about two weeks before I "adopted her."
The cat is an evil genius.  It cuddled and played and snuggled and was perfect in every way at the “adoption event” - a communist front hosted by our local pet food supply supermarket. She remained a docile, purring gorgeous goddess until I forked over the 75.00 and signed the "adoption" papers.  Looking back, it should have been a major clue to me that the hippie running the adoption event; wild eyed and wearing sandals made from rope, was so covered in scratches that it appeared she had been waterskiing through a cactus patch while being towed by a runaway stage.

Anyhow, MoonFlower the cat lady says to me:

"This one is my absolute FAVORITE!  She is SUCH a sweetie....."

And then she added very quickly

“…ifyouadoptheryouhavetopromisetokeepherandnevergiveheruportakehertotheshelterandihaveputachipinherearandiwillfindoutifyougetridofher..."

She said it so fast that I had no idea what it meant.  All I knew was my then 5 year old son was in love with this cat and the yuppie two-income/no kids people who were in line before us were looking long and hard at the grey, docile one that was at that moment licking my son's face. 

At the time, I thought "How cute."  The cat, we later learned, was thinking "Taste's great!" So the grey one played us all.  She was all cute, warm and cuddly until we sprung her from the Hippie Hollow cat farm, but as soon as we got her home, she was a tigeress in a new jungle.

Now you might not imagine that my plan for the brown one and the grey one to get along like sisters actually worked, but it did. It was the one plan I have made in the last 20 years that actually came off without a hitch.  They get along exactly like sisters, lots of clawing and yelling and hissing and fighting over the bathroom until neither can tolerate the other and then one of them throws up.

The grey one, at least, I can respect.  She is a masterful fighter, cunning and resourceful tracker and the biggest cat bully I have ever met.  She got so good at hunting the brown one that we had to put a bell around her neck.  It was a week later that I caught her practicing her stalking route in the basement so that she could walk the entire route from the stairs to the litter box in measured, steady paces without making that bell ring. When she got to a point where the bell would ring, she froze, then backtracked precisely, and started again until she got it right.  I watched her practice this drill over the course of an entire week until she got to the point where she could mount an effective sneak attack on the brown one while the brown one was dropping anchor at Cat beach. Truth be told, the grey cat scares the crap out of me.  The brown one, not so much.  If this was a prison, the brown would be someone’s prison wife, I am sure of it.

Fortunately for both of them, the real people in charge in my house - my wife and both kids - love these worthless cats for reasons that escape me.  So for the most part I try and keep my cat cynicism to myself and continue to buy food and litter.  Alright, I admit it - I know their names.  The brown one is named Zoe and she is my wife's best friend.  She, the cat, understands most of the girl stuff that flies completely over my head.  She is pretty much "Thelma" to Jeanine's "Louise."  And the grey one is the mighty and impressive Sasha -and she is to the kids what most dogs are to little boys.  I only pretend to understand, because as a little boy I had dogs - and this is definitely a cat centric house.

Thanks for stopping by the blog today and catching up a bit on what goes on in our little corner of the world. 

Politics; religion; and small towns.

Well this being a small town, there are a few things here about which people have very strong opinions.  First and foremost is anything you are doing that seems weird to them.  Small town folks just want to understand, and part of understanding is watching their neighbors for any signs of weirdness.  Yes, we notice things like the wife who mows the lawn, the husband who cooks, or the stay at home mom who also happens to have a housekeeper AND a lawn service.  We can make an entire evening's conversation out of who threw out a perfectly good washing machine or which mom was acting insane at the local basketball game.  Speculating on the weirdness of people is probably the source of about 65% of any small town's collective conversations. 

And youth athletics - all manner of youth athletic programs are very important in our corner of the world.  Small towns make for great kids.  I know, I have met a lot of them in the last three years.  Great kids who learn all about life on the gridiron, ball diamond, hardcourt, or soccer pitch. As a town we love all of these kids, want them to be challenged, to have opportunities to work hard and succeed, to be treated fairly and to work with coaches who care.  And yes, we wanna win and we all have lots of opinions about how to go about getting there.  So sports are very important at all levels here.

And, pretty much like everywhere else, religion and politics are important here.  Nothing more important to people than to have their faith affirmed; either their faith in the almighty, or their faith in their political representatives.

Yesterday was the third annual "Pulpit Free Sunday" - an event created by some in the National religious community to provoke a lawsuit with the federal government so they can challenge the constitutionality of a 56 year old amendment to Federal tax law.  The amendment, promoted by LBJ when he was a senator from Texas, holds that pastors may not engage in political advocacy from the pulpit while at the same time enjoying their tax free exemption.

Like all, I have strong feelings about both politics and religion.  I also have strong feelings about the interplay of both and the high degree of mischief that may be engaged in if political leaders are allowed to manipulate churches; and church leaders are allowed to manipulate politics.

So, of the issue let me just say this - my wish for all of America, small and big town alike, is that for my church to get out of the government business, and my government to get out of the church business. But I don't see that happening any time soon.

Now, having gotten that out of the way, anyone want to ask me how our football team fared over the weekend? :-)

Thanks for stopping by my blog.  I hope, whatever your faith, you find it affirmed this week.

Dennis

"Yep, that's about right." Kids laugh at, and with, their parents

Humor was a staple in my house growing up.  Both the deliberate and the unintentional kind.

My dad was one of the funniest human beings I have ever met.  A master of impersonations and improvisation, he was quick witted and funny on his feet.  His ribald sayings are not appropriate for this forum, nor would they be among a gathering of longshoremen or most cowboys, but the recollection of those raw and insightful "Bob-isms" is enough to have me and my siblings in stitches within moment of someone saying "well you know what dad always said..."

And he was also Tim Allen before anyone ever heard of Tim Allen.  One of my most cherished memories of my life with him comes from YMCA Indian Guides camp when I was about 7 or 8.  I was sitting on a large rock just off the lakeside path at Camp Ohiyesa, a YMCA camp in Michigan's Livingston County.  As I sat there, I observed silently, save the muffled snickering that was building in chest, my dad, staggering down the path like a drunken sailor wearing a canoe for a hat.  He did not see me (he had a canoe on his head) and I quickly surmised that he was going to take the canoe out for a spin on the lake.

So I watched him walk by.  I knew it was him because of his Chuck Taylor high tops (he only wore gym shoes on weekends and on vacation), his distinctive short sleeved Ban-lon orange polyester shirt with its usual pack of smokes rolled up on the left shirt sleeve, and, well, because he was walking like a tipsy version of one of those big-headed parade characters with a canoe on his head.

Knowing him as I did, there was not one chance in hell (yes, I believe at age 7 or 8 I thought it exactly that way) I was getting in that canoe with him.  This is the man who once zipped a certain part of me up into Dr. Denton pajamas and, later in life, blew himself up trying to light a boiler on a diesel burning furnace.  This is the man who every Saturday would venture into the basement to work on a project and within an hour would be coming upstairs, hands dripping with blood, in search of paper towel and Mercurochrome.  No, I am certain I knew enough about his habits to believe there was not a chance in hell I was getting in that canoe with him.

So I watched him wobble on by with that canoe on his head, and then not five minutes later watched him storm back passed me; talking...more or less mumbling really...to himself without even acknowledging that he saw me, and he was completely soaking wet from his arm pits down to his canvas high tops.

I remember distinctly thinking "yep, that's about right..."

As I said, there was my dad, who was funny.  And then there was my mother, who was more classically funny.  Bill Cosby funny, "Your Show of Shows" funny.  She loves a good joke, or a good prank, or a funny bit just as much as anyone.  I can recall vividly a trip we were taking to my grandmother's house and the four of us; both of my brothers and me, and my sister were all complaining about how "boring it was there" and how all Grandpa ever watched on TV was British comedy and opera.

So she made us a wager.  She said that when she was our age there was no such thing as television and that when we got to Grandma and Grandpa's house, she would play some records (RECORDS?!) for us that would make us think television was boring.  I remember thinking she had been riding in one too many canoes with my dad and had probably hit her head on something.

"Records?  Better than TV?!" we said.  "Ha! - okay mom, what's the bet?"

The wiley schoolteacher bet us that if we agreed, after an hour of listening to records, that they were better than TV, we would give up our TV after school for a week.  We all agreed because we knew there was no way we were losing that bet. 

So after our arrival and hugs and kisses were passed out all around, we settled into the living room with the record player and four records.  I remember them to this day:  The Wonderful World of Jonathan Winters, The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby is a Very Funny Fellow, RIGHT!, and an original recording of Detroit's WXYZ radio's Lone Ranger serial.

We listened to Winters first and were all hooked, immediately.  Each album seemed better than the last.  We gladly gave up our TV privileges in exchange for being able to listen to that Lone Ranger recording all by itself. 

So, as a parent myself, I can see there was some kind of plan to raising kids who weren't just plugged in to the TV, but who understood and appreciated funny things.  Everyone in my family has a sense of humor so it is natural for me to try and raise my kids with that same appreciation for playfulness and good humor.  I can also see that my siblings have a plan for raising funny kids - my older brother, himself also an educator - has what he calls the Canon for American humor that he works his way through with his kids.  Must see movies on his list include Young Frankenstein, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and Some Like it Hot.

For my family, we try our best at having good humor and laughter as a part of our household routine.  It makes a difference, I can tell already.  I can remember one New Year's eve not long ago, my daughter was about 16 months old and my son about 7 and a half.  We celebrated and let the oldest stay up past midnight when he and I lit off fireworks in the street, another staple of my family.

As we counted down the minutes to midnight, talk turned to New Year's resolutions.  Now I have kept exactly one New Year's resolution in my entire life, switching from regular Pepsi to diet Pepsi many many years ago and I believe I was aided in that only by the addictive properties of my "dark master, Diet Pepsi."

Nonetheless, I make resolutions every year.  So I told Michael "This is the year that I am cleaning up my language, no more swears." 

Now talk about having a house full of humor, my wife and son laughed out loud at that mere fact that my tongue did not leap from my lying lips and run screaming down the street at the absurdity of that proclamation.  But, I figured, what the hell?  It couldn't hurt to try and ease up on the bad language.

So, after kissing us all good night and wishing us a Happy New Year, my wife climbs the stairs with the 15 month old, tucks her in, and goes to bed herself.  Junior and I light off our fireworks, cleanup and are headed to bed about 45 minutes later.  I say to him, about 50 times, to keep quiet once we are in the house.  "No lights, no noise, we'll brush our teeth extra hard in the morning. The last thing I need," I said, "a crying 15 month old" who has been awakened from her cozy slumber.

So my son tip-toes upstairs without turning on any lights and I hear him very quietly getting ready for bed.  I follow behind him but somehow manage to kick a stainless steel cookie sheet holding the dead bodies of all the fireworks on it into a picture frame, with glass, that sits at the bottom of our stairs. 

The quiet of our New Year's eve home was shattered and, all of a sudden, our house sounded like Chinese New Year for about 1/10th of a second.  I waited for the sound to settle to see if the little one was stirring, which, of course, she was, and then let out in a loud stage whisper:

"FUDGE!"

Only I didn't say "Fudge."

It's true.  Sad, inexcusable, but altogether true.  I considered the swear words in my arsenal and as a first strike reached immediately for the atom bomb.  It was out of my lips before I even knew it was coming up my throat.

The dim hope I had that no one heard me faded fast when, from my son's room through the darkness, I heard a little giggle and him say to himself "Well, that didn't last long."

I wonder if he also thought to himself, "Yep, that seems about right."

So thanks for stopping by my blog today.  Whatever it is you are up to today, I hope there are some laughs and the foundations for some warm memories involved.  Take good care of yourselves.

Dennis

Fencing, really?

My son, age 10, is an athlete.  Well, perhaps I should refine that statement.  He is incredibly fit, almost impossibly so. He has been blessed with foot speed, coordination, and an athlete's lean body which, aside from the striking resemblance of my "Fred Flintstone" big toe to his, would have me seriously questioning his paternity.  He is also pretty smart - all in all a good combination for most sports.

So when he begged for a year straight to play football, I gave-in and vowed to go to his mother, the lady who brought him forth into this world, and say "He gets to try it.  If he likes it, fine, if not - well at least he will know why not." 

Fifty years ago, in my grandfather's generation, they would have called it "putting your foot down."  In 2010 we call those ancient times "the good old days."  But after a much more cosmopolitan discussion with his mom, and no putting down of feet, his mother relented and agreed to let him play. I am certain she did it just to shut us both up.  She also let me know in no uncertain terms that if her beautiful boy suffered any injury that it would be my...well...let's just say she used a word not fit for a lady or for this family column...but she made her point well known that she expected her son to finish football in the same fine condition physically that he was in when he started.

Along the way she also said he did not have the temperament for football, was not aggressive, "did not spit."  I wondered what "spitting" had to do with playing football in her eyes, but ultimately we all threw ourselves into almost three months of football together.  We worried about him plenty, but, just looking at him, I knew he could keep up with anyone out on the field, right? Strong, smart, and fast.  Exactly what he needed.

Well, you know how they say that nobody knows their child like a mom knows her child?

Football season rolls around and we sign the boy wonder up.  And the first five practices are all fitness and conditioning - he loves it - he is a running, push-up, jumping jack doing machine and is having the time of his life.

Problem was, eventually they issued helmets and pads and started expecting the kids to hit each other. The boy wonder, who was raised "...not to solve problems using his fists..." didn't really understand the concept of hitting.  After the first practice in full pads I am sure, however, our first born firmly grasped the concept of "being hit."

So football was not an easy experience for our family.  His coaches, I am sure, sensed his unique brand of "Woody Allen-like" ferocity, I was terrified that if he didn't get more aggressive he wouldn't be able to protect himself, and his mom was spent emotionally over the concern that her terrific little kid would somehow be morphed into a flesh eating axe killer by three months of Rocket Football.

So over the course of the season, while I argued with his coaches for more playing time, and with him to protect himself, and his mom to not worry so much, he seemed to be working on his own agenda - survival.

Please understand that he is a beautiful kid inside and out. Ten times - no - scratch that - 100 times the child I was when I was his age.  But let's just say this; he is not overly burdened with aggression.  

He is incredibly competitive but his is ultimately a compassionate soul.  Turns out his mom did indeed know him better than any of the rest of us.  By the end of football season we were all ready to celebrate - him for surviving, and me and his mom for making it to the end of what was a contentious season for our family.  Contentious because I kept wanting him to play harder and play more; and for her wanting him to come home with all his Chiclets front and center and his bones, tendons, and ligaments still attached in all the right places.

I have to share that, after the second to the last game of the season, having watched him practice just as hard as any other kid on the team, I told him he could quit the team if he wasn't having fun.  That was a reversal of my deal with him when I told him I would "go to bat" for him with his mom over football.  I said I would do that but if he played, he couldn't quit.  He had to stick it out for the season.

I told him I thought he was being taken advantage of.  He never missed a practice, never talked back to his coaches, never quit.  He just wasn't real big into the whole "football aspect" of football.  Consequently, the coaches never played him. Understandable and true if you are coaching at the high school level, but this was a community league and this was his first exposure to the sport.  So I was miffed.

My miffedness escalated dramatically when family traveled from all over to an away game and my son got put in with 17 seconds to play in the 4th quarter and our team up by three touchdowns.  It was the only game that team won all season.

So after another game where he was only allowed in on a couple of plays; after working his butt off for the better part of two and half months, I said to him that if he wanted to quit I would turn his gear in myself.  I expected him to jump at the chance.

Instead, he looked up at me, arms covered in bruises from practice, after having played exactly two snaps in the previous game, and said "Dad, this is a little town.  I am going to see those guys at school for a long time. No one out there is going to be able to call me a quitter.  They can do whatever they want to me, but I'm not quitting." 

I was proud and relieved and angry all at once.  Proud because of how insightful he was at just 9 years old. Relieved because I was secretly hoping he would stick it out; and angry because I felt the coaches were just wrong.  None of it matters now, but I was livid then.

But that moment when he told me he wasn't quitting revealed more character in him than would have been created if he played every snap of every game all season.  I could not have been more proud of him.  So we agreed that his last game would be fun. He could do whatever he wanted, play if he wanted, sit if he wanted.  He was expected to give a good effort in practice and also if he got to play, but we weren't going to have any more fights, either me with his coaches or between him and me, about football. 

He played a lot the last game of the season - even made a spectacular tackle that he never got credit for.  I remember that they did not win but I don't remember the score.  What I do remember is that I saw in him what he was really made of that day he refused to quit and how happy we both were driving away from the grid-iron that day.  High fives and laughter all around, I remember that scene vividly.

So fall rolls around this year and we asked him what does he want to do.  He plays basketball and baseball but with no football this fall, what did he think he was going to do with all his free time?

"Fencing, dad."

"Fencing, really" I said to him.  "Son, we live in a small town - this is not exactly the fencing capitol of the world.  In fact our small town is probably not the "anything" capitol of the world so how the heck are we going to pull off fencing?"

Well, as it turns out we are close to a town with a major university and there is a fencing coach there who teaches youth fencing as part of the community recreation program.  So this fall I am proud and happy to report that my son, who attacked offensive lines with all the aggression and ferocity of your average cat burglar sneaking through a darkened museum, is Zorro when you actually put a saber in his hands.

Thanks for stopping by my blog.  Here's hoping that whatever you are doing with your kids this fall, it is fun for all and that everybody comes home with all their "Chiclets front and center."

Dennis

P.S.  What prompted this entry today was my reading of a news article about the suicide of a Penn State University football player who, after his death, was discovered to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy - a disease of the brain associated with repeated injuries.

I do not question the judgment of any parent letting their kids play football or any other sport, it's up to the parents and the kid.  But I wanted to throw this out there in the hopes that, as we continue to raise the awareness of kids playing while hurt, we also raise the awareness of the long term consequences of concussions and other chronic brain injuries associated with sports.

Yes Mom, I too am a fan of these beautiful Michigan autumn days.

Of my blogging efforts, my mom, the retired (and amazing) school teacher recently wrote,

"How about a piece on these fabulous September days? God how I love September in Michigan. All the years I taught, September would fly by and I never noticed. Now it is my favorite month."

Yes mom, I too am a fan of these gorgeous September days.  What's not to love?  This being Michigan, the Lord has finally turned off the "Sweat Lodge" setting for our pleasant peninsula and we can actually enjoy a brisk 68 degree day with no humidity and a light breeze.  Michigan is perhaps the only place on Earth where you can get a sunburn AND a windburn on the same day.

And this being Michigan, we can pretty much enjoy high school and college football anywhere in the State on any given fall weekend.  Unfortunately, this being Michigan, it is also virtually impossible to enjoy pro-football at any time of the year unless you are from the UP where they eat pasties and root for Green Bay.

But in Michigan, pro football woes aside, we get to drink our fill at the nearest cider mill each autumn as we prepare for Halloween and the onset of yet another Michigan winter.  Who among us hasn't eaten a warm doughnut or a caramel apple in Parshallville, St Johns, Hartland, or Northville?

Another terrific Michigan fall tradition is the changing of the season.  One of the things that makes this place really special is the leafy fireworks that splash through our hardwoods and color our lawns each fall.  Each year we look upon the same scenes and feel renewed by the changing of the colors - one last terrific "Hurrah!" before winter sets in and strips the leaves from the trees, turns the highways black with grime, and buries us in foot after foot of that white stuff that some people really seem to enjoy.  It's like rounding a third turn in a four turn race and the crowd giving you a standing ovation.

A glance out my window shows that the oak tree across the street is once again headed toward a fabulous crimson, yellow and orange farewell before it hibernates for the winter.  I have lived in this house for four autumns now, and every year that tree in particular just takes my breath away.

In the fall, we get all things good here - pumpkin pie, jumping in leaf piles, school and a welcome break from the heat and humidity.  It's our chance to slow down and take in the colors, flavors and sensations if we elect to do so. A graceful, gentle celebration of one more year in the books as we wind down toward winter and the New Year.  It is the calendar's warm twilight.

It is also the time of baseball's greatest season - the post season.  And a Michigan autumn is the time for the best golf anywhere.  For me, it's also a time to remember my awesome school teacher mom - who on one particularly beautiful autumn day when I was about 12 years old, chased down the school bus on her way to work and told her children "Get in the car, today is the kind of day we only get once in a while, so let's do something fun..." That day we all skipped school (except Pat, who had a test) and went to Greenfield Village for the day.

Greenfield Village in Fall, Dearborn, Michigan

That day we spent crunching around the leaves in Dearborn is one of my happiest autumn memories.  Not because of what we did there. I had been there many times before and have been there many since.  The memory isn't what we did there, mom.  It's what you did to get us there.  The teaching that you did that day in presenting a lesson whose object was to seize a moment because you never know if that moment is ever going to come around again.  Well, that is one of the greatest reasons why I love autumn in Michigan. Because it reminds me of that one day in particular. 

Lastly, I should add that my birthday is also in the fall, and please prove to me that any day has ever actually been made worse by the eating of birthday cake and the opening of presents.  So, for me, another reason to love fall :-)

Thanks for stopping by my blog.  I hope you and yours are enjoying the fall weather and making the most of your time together.  You never know when that one little thing you do will end up being the one big thing that sticks with someone forever.

Take care,

Dennis

The miracle story of my miracle daughter, on her fourth birthday

My daughter is 4 years old, today.  She is everything you would imagine in a great kid.  Bright, funny, cute with huge blue eyes and the personality of a dolphin.  She is our miracle.

I used to joke, after my son was born, that the miracle of childbirth wasn't that anyone would ever have one baby. It is that anyone would ever have a second.  It is a scary thing bringing a child into this world. So much responsibility and so many what-ifs.  That, along with the actual act of carrying a child to term and then actually delivering it is enough to scare many away.

When our son was born, the pregnancy was uneventful aside from the run of the mill stuff.  No real scares. We conceived the first month we actually set about trying to start a family and the pregnancy was pretty much textbook stuff.  There was, however, just one brief scare during his delivery when the bloodflow from mom to baby was obstructed and his heart rate plummeted in utero, but that was about it. In hindsight, comparatively speaking, it was hardly even a bump in the road.

But you know what they say, sometimes you just don't know what you just don't know.  Such was the case with the relatively minor scare during delivery.  As it was, that one little scare terrified me.  The thought of what might have happened was enough to convince me that one was enough.  I hated the hospital, the monitors, the not knowing if everything would be OK.  When our son was born I thought we took home the pot on our first round of blackjack against the house and that we should walk away from the table right then.  I told my wife I would be perfectly happy raising just that one wonderful child we had.  She said she was not sure just yet.

So after our son was about 2, we started talking about having another baby.  My wife, the organized one in the family (if we lived on Sesame Street, she would be Bert and I would be every bit of Ernie and then some), started planning for a second child.

"We'll start in December," she said "so we can have a September baby."

I recall laughing and saying that there was no guarantee that would work.  Nonetheless she was confident and we started in December...of 2002...so we could have a September baby.

By September of 2003 we were concerned.

By September of 2004 we had watched every TV special on infertility, worn out several computer keyboards searching the Internet, and tried just about every home remedy short of voo-doo ritual aimed at engaging the fertility gods and blessing us with a second child.  No luck.

By 2005 we were at the threshold of the dreaded "specialist."  Specialist is Latin for a place where "there is no modesty."  I recall she was a humorless, brilliant woman with cartoon sperm all over her office.  Ceramic sperm, cardboard sperm, sperm in bas relief coming out of the walls.  There were even several "sperm mobiles" hanging from the ceiling.  If it was in a movie it would have been hilarious.  I think there was even a sperm puppet but my memory might be wrong on that one.  My reaction to all of it was one of dread.

"How much hope, and how much money." Those were the thoughts that dominated my mind on the trips to the specialist.  I had a definite budget for both.

My wife, Jeanine, for her part, was as courageous as I have ever seen any person about the process. "Whatever we need to do, we'll do it," she said.

Yeah, easy for you to say, sister.  You aren't getting sent into the room with vinyl couch, dirty magazines, and Tupperware and everyone knows what you are up to in there. 

Honestly, talk about the place where shame goes to die, the "collection lab" is the epicenter of the "no humility" zone.  On my first visit, I walked into my private room, took one look at the vinyl couch and began to laugh so hard that the 20 something female lab technician came back to check on me.

"Yes, ma'am, of course I am OK" I recall saying. "No ma'am, I'm just laughing at the couch...I don't know why I am laughing at the couch...It's a funny couch...No, I don't need any help and I don't think my wife would appreciate you asking me that question in these circumstances..."  I told her.  After that I heard her walk away laughing.

So after all the tests, two surgeries for my wife, and more "procedures," plus the addition of a second job for me to help pay for the procedures, it was now September, 2005.  Along the way, in July of 2005, my dad died unexpectedly.  I felt like quitting.  We were broke, financially and emotionally.  I was working two jobs, my wife had already had a miscarriage, we had a five year old boy at home who was perfect in every way you could expect a five year old boy to be perfect - handsome, funny, strong, smart, well mannered, compassionate.  I was ready to quit. I wanted to quit and I told my wife I was quitting.  She was faithful and said, "not just yet."

It was late summer in 2005 that my wife, unable to sleep and channel surfing after midnight, made a significant discovery watching one of those morbid TV medical shows. You know the ones, they show you all the physical torment a person is going through and you see how all the doctors along the way have screwed up diagnosing their condition until that one special doctor sees something that fixes it.  She was watching this show and I heard her say "This is me, this is what I have..."  Skeptical and tired though I was, I had to admit that the symptoms described did seem like her in a mysterious, unsolvable inability to become pregnant kind of way.

So she, the "A" student, took copious notes and we made an appointment with our "specialist" and our family doctor.  Both  gave us a collective "m'eh."  I was going on 41, my wife just turned 39 and I think they thought it was time for us to start looking at other options (the specialist was talking "IVF" to which our bank account said "NFW" and our family doctor was talking about adoption).  But, the Nurse Practitioner, an enthusiastic force to be reckoned with, had heard of this condition, had seen it in her own family, and, after a simple blood test and the writing of a 7.00 per month prescription, ultimately got us on what we thought was the right path.

So meds in hand, we started a new course of medicine and procedures.  The specialist's fees were not enough to make us go broke all at once, but just enough to bankrupt us slowly over time.  By November, 2005 we started talking about what seemed obvious - if we weren't pregnant by December then we were done.

When the middle of December, 2005 came and the monthly pregnancy test came back negative, we decided we had had enough.  We were done.  Jeanine, earlier in the summer had another miscarriage, there was thousands upon thousands of dollars spent at the specialist, horrible fights, horrible tension, the romance gone from our marriage. We decided "enough."  Our November visit to the specialist would have been our last. That is, except, as it ultimately turned out, for that one part of living where, just when you've made up your mind to quit, hope has a way of tip-toeing in and whispering softly, "not just yet."

After 4 years of trying, our minds were made up. We resolved to meet our family at Christmas, 2005 and just get on with our life.  We gathered at my oldest brother's home for family Christmas - the first time we had all been together since my dad died. 

As one of the executors of his estate, I had a modest amount of his money to distribute to each of my siblings and thought this would be the perfect time to do it.  Dad's passing was a surprise and hit us all very hard, so I sought out each sibling privately and delivered to each, individually, an envelope with a little money in it from Dad.

My oldest brother, himself a family man, in the quiet of his beautifully appointed dining room, looked at me as I handed him the envelope and said "Denny, you got bills?"  I actually laughed out loud and said, "Yeah, Pat, you could say I got some bills..."

He met my gaze and handed his envelope back to me without even counting what was in it, and said "well then take this, and do something nice for your family."  It was a gesture so kind and generous and unexpected that I didn't know what to say.  I was embarrassed. Not wanting to refuse his generosity, I thanked him and put the money in my jacket pocket.

On the way home I told my wife about the encounter.  I am not too proud to admit that we both cried a bit as our son snoozed in the car seat behind us.  Without either of us saying it out loud, we both knew what we do with that sudden, lovely, unexpected gesture. We both knew what the "nice thing" would be that we would do for our family.

The next morning we called the specialist and arranged for an appointment the following week, the last week of December, 2005.  The money was just enough to cover one more "procedure." So once again we threw our modesty out the window, handed over the money, and said a little prayer.  That prayer was answered 10 months later when we welcomed a fantastic daughter into our family.

In the end, it turned out that we started in December (2002) to have a September (2006) baby.

The birth announcements we sent introducing our miracle daughter, the daughter who came home after we had all but given up dreaming about her, read "Sometimes, when life tells you to quit, hope walks in on tip-toe and whispers "not just yet." 

She is four years old today and, along with her big  brother, stands as the greatest thing I have ever done with my life.  She is a pig-tailed, giggly, wonderful slice of Heaven on Earth. 

Happy Birthday, little frog. Your mom, dad, big brother and all of your family loves you. Even the cats think you are cool.

Thanks for stopping by my blog and sharing this story of how the frog came into our lives.  I hope all is well with you and yours and that during your journey you take the time to remember that hope, just after love, is the greatest of all gifts.

Dennis

Lions, I am trying to reverse curse you

A Michigan farmer dies and goes to hell.

Being a Michigan farmer from a small town, he had always been a good church going family man.

Unfortunately, owing to a mistake in Heaven, the farmer, forever a kind and decent man, ends up in Hell.

The second he gets there, the devil wants to punish his good Christian spirit.

So the devil gives the farmer a plot of land and tells him, "you are to plow this land for the rest of eternity. But no matter how hard you try, nothing will ever grow, and you will always be dissatisfied with yourself!"

A few days go by, and the devil notices the farmer is very happy.

"WHAT THE HELL!" the devil screams. "Aren't you miserable that you can't grow crops no matter how hard you try!"

The farmer says, "No! Are you kidding me, I am from Michigan, nothing good ever comes without hard work and perseverance. Its not the crops I love, its the work!"

The devil hears this and get irritated, so he says, "Fine, from now on, the weather will be a dry heat of over 130 degrees! Let's see how you can handle that!"

A few days pass of the blast furnace and the Devil notices the farmer is happier than before.

"How can you be happy working in this dry heat!" he screeches at the farmer.

The farmer replies, "Don't you get it yet! I'm from Michigan, if we ain't freezing, we frying.  All of us farmers there can work all day long in this weather!"

This time the devil is really upset, so he says, "FINE! Then from now on, it is going to be off season. It is going to be dark all the time and you will always have an urge to plow the fields, but it will be snowing, cold and dark, and all you will see around you is frozen dead crops you can do nothing with!"

The devil goes back to his throne very pleased with himself knowing he finally made the farmer miserable. Not five seconds later, a demon comes up to the devil frantic and scared, and says "Satan! You won't believe it, the farmer is jumping up and down completely ecstatic!"

By this time, the devil is completely furious and runs up to the farmer and yells, "I have done everything you make your stay here MISERABLE! and still you are excited! Aren't you cold?"

"Freezing!" yells the farmer

"And aren't you frustrated with the crops!" Asks the devil

"Completely!" answers the farmer

"Then what in the Hell are you so damn happy about!" Asks the very confused devil

The farmer jumps up and down with a huge grin on his face and says to the devil, "Hells frozen over! The Detroit Lions must have won the Superbowl!"

So it's Gorgeous fall day for the first day of the Pro Football season.  I have to admit, I swore off the Lions after being an ardent life-time fan on that infamous day that they "took the wind" after winning the toss in an overtime game against Chicago in 2002. They lost that day, of course, and on a vast majority of the football Sundays since then. Their decades of seeming intentional incompetence led me to just say "scrap the franchise."

So I was not bothered by much of the last football decade while Detroit stunk up the entire North American Continent in terms of pro football.  But, I am a Michigan State fan, and therefore am a Drew Stanton fan.  So when the Lions drafted him I was a little interested.

And Matthew Stafford's performance last November against Cleveland, where he threw five touchdowns including engineering the game winning drive with a separated shoulder, had me seeing visions of Bobby Lane.  Stafford is tough and a leader. Drafting Jahvd Best out of California and Suh out of Nebraska also awakened my long dormant interest in this feeble team.

So I commit to watch them again this year, but with a jaundiced eye.  And toward that end, I have to say that I have rooted for them on and off for 40 years and they have won exactly one playoff game. So this year, i will watch them and root against them in the secret hope that that will be the cosmic grease on the Lions forever stuck Karmic axle.

Matthew Stafford versus the Cleveland Browns, 2009

So if you see me rooting against those bums, those dirty so-and-so's, well you will know why.

Thanks for stopping by my blog - hope you and yours are well and happy this Indian summer day.

Dennis

Halloween in our town starts in August

Invariably it begins right around the first of August.  My wife will say over dinner "we need to start thinking about costumes for the kids for Halloween..."

Now when I was a kid, I am sure my mom and great aunt started thinking about costumes for the kids very early because both of those ladies sewed and our costumes were a) always amazing, and b) always hand made.  My mother, if she reads this, will want to check me into the nut-house when she realizes that there are people actually related to her who spend hard earned money on store bought costumes.

Guilty as charged is all I can say.  My wife does not sew.  I have sewn exactly one thing in my life, a denim duffle-bag in 8th grade home-economics whose stiching lasted just long enough to survive the grading process but not long enough to actually carry any of my duffle home.  So making costumes is right out.  We try and be frugal, find deals, recycle previous costumes from our oldest to our youngest (where possible).

Over the years our kids have had terrific costumes; an astronaut, musketeer, Indiana Jones, Tigger, a baseball slugger, frog, faerie, etc.

The one rule is that whatever the costume, no bad guys are allowed.  So far we haven't had any resistance on the topic except for the year our son wanted to be Darth Vader.  We had some discussions over whether or not Darth was really bad or was bad but "redeemed."  In the end he chose Indiana Jones because he got to carry a gun and a whip.  So, armed and dangerous but fighting on the side of goodness I suppose.

The day itself is always a great celebration.  We live in an area where people come from all over to trick or treat.  Generally we plan for around 400 kids a year and it works out to usually be a little less than that so there are leftovers.  My reward for passing out candy.  Our neighbors usually light off fireworks and there is a parade through the downtown on Main Street.  My first Halloween here was so picture perfect and "Norman Rockwell" that if Hollywood put it in a movie you would have said "yeah, sure..."  But seriously, it is just that kind of little town where the kids still dress up at school, there still are parties to celebrate the day, the teachers are still giddy enough about their jobs and the kids as to make sure it is fun. The folks living along Main Street still come out and clap for their town's kids and throw tootsie rolls and smarties to the costumed paraders.  I have grown to love Halloween, again.

So how about you?  Any cool costumes or parties planned?  Costumes from days gone by that bring a smile to your face?  How about your feelings on the whole "good guy/bad guy" issue?  Drop me a note or a comment and let me know.

Thanks for stopping by my blog,

Dennis

Hatred never cures hatred; but then again, maybe it will, eventually

So this is an odd beginning to what was supposed to be a blog about being a small town dad. Nothing here yet about little league or cookouts or racing bikes with cards in our spokes.  Good topics all and I promise to keep them for future reference, really.  This one starts with hate and intolerance - hooray - I know - just what you tuned in for.  I’ll see if I can’t work in the Small Town Dad stuff somehow in a way that all makes sense.

So, I’ve been reading, along with much of the country, about this “church” in Georgia that is set to burn the Koran this weekend. My first thought, I confess, was of Dr. Henry Jones (played by Sean Connery in the third of the Indiana Jones movies) when he said to Ilsa words to the effect “perhaps you should spend less time burning books, and more time reading them.” One of my favorite lines from any movie.

In reality I no more ever read the Koran than I have ever burned one, so I am no expert on the subject. No idea whatsoever what its doctrine is.  Maybe it is loathsome from cover to cover, I don't know.  But my academic background is in journalism and law – so I do have a few opinions about burning books. I believe that burning a book, or a flag, or an effigy, horrible as those gestures are, is a manifestation of our protected free speech rights. I personally think these acts are repugnant and have no place in a civilized society. But, then again; the First Amendment does not only protect popular speech, it protects the unpopular speech as well - perhaps moreso. So let's begin with this:

I believe people have a right to be as ignorant and judgmental and uninformed as they want to be.

If they want to put that on display, so be it. It certainly sells soesn't it? If the news crews didn’t show up, none of us would even know it was happening. It's not like Fox or CNN ever broke into their regular programming to scream "HEY, Everything's OK!  Looks like it's gonna be ok for a while too!  so go back to what you were doing, nothing happening here at all..."

All of which brings me to my point: Hatred never cures hatred. It never has (yet).

The legacy of the world’s most successful civil rights activists teaches us all the lesson we would otherwise love to forget – that hatred does not cure hatred; intolerance does not cure intolerance; and contempt for another’s beliefs is no righteous path to common ground or civility. Hatred, intolerance, contempt for others – those are all self-indulgent emotions made to make us feel better by judging someone else to be collectively worse than us, our family, our group, our religion, our county, our whatever.

Hatred breeds hatred, or so I thought.

I thought long and hard about this idea, being a small town dad with a 20 minute commute 4 times a day, because I wonder how I will ever explain these things to my kids. We live in the country in a fairly homogenous little town.  To a ten year old, burning books sounds actually kinda fun if you pick the right books – math books or the journal their teacher makes them keep. They can’t conceive of a universe where the act of burning the cornerstone work of a person’s faith is meant to demonstrate to that person “you are worthless, what you think sacred, I think worthless. There can be no common ground between us - you are my enemy simply because of what you believe.” Kids don’t think that way. They have to be taught to think that way.

So, thinking about these things on my 20 minute commute 4 times a day, I thought that if the subject came up, I would try and teach the two little frogs who share my pond, ages 10 and almost 4, that hatred cannot cure hatred. I am very lucky because mine are compassionate kids. Their mother is as warm-hearted a person as I have ever met. So half the battle was won already – start with kind kids. And to start with kind kids, you have to make it a point to try and raise kind kids.  My wife gets all the credit there, too.

As I searched for a more practical analogy to a ten year old and his four year old sister, I thought I would say that when we go to the doctor for a cold, he doesn’t expose us to MORE cold germs, he exposes us to…wait a minute…

“Mr. Armistead, Dr. Jonas Salk is calling for you on line two….”

Of course the logic hit me just as it did you. In fact, we DO cure illness with exposure to the illness itself. Already you are thinking of the Polio vaccine, flu vaccines made from recombinant DNA of the flu virus; and of course anyone with allergies in need of allergy shots has already picked up on my bad logic.

So maybe the key to eradicating hatred isn’t a lack of hatred, it is a recognition of hatred.  An understanding of hatred and a difficult but essential conversation about the consequence of hatred. Maybe the words from parents should be words encouraging their children to listen; to gather facts and actually deliberate over them. Maybe that’s how we cure hatred. Honestly, does anyone truly believe that somewhere in this world of 6 billion people there isn’t the Muslim equivalent of themself – perhaps a family man with beautiful kids who worries about their future – or a mom who sings at night and works hard to keep her kids safe from harm?

In a sense, I guess we have to look at the book burners and give reluctant thanks for giving us the cause to engage this topic with our kids; to be the object lesson of why hatred never works. I hope their vile speech ends with just that, speech, and that no lives are lost or servicemen and women placed in further jeopardy.

For sure I hate like hell to thank them, but I can at least give them credit.

So anyhow, thanks for stopping by.

Dennis

the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single post

Sooo - SmallTownDad is officially under construction.  A place for me, a small town dad; married 19 years and father of two, and a definite small town guy, to just kind of try and share stories from a little of this small town life.